Thursday, 2 February 2012

Conventional Malware Techniques Spread into Mobile

It’s quite interesting to witness how the years of malware evolution are coming into the present mobile malware scene. Android mobile malware in particular adopts conventional malware techniques at a disturbingly fast pace.

We have already encountered an IRC bot functionality incorporated into Android malware and built by using low-level native code. Exploit techniques and high-level Java code obfuscation are not a big surprise either. Another day introduces another milestone – such as a newly discovered strain that now relies on server-based polymorphism. In a nutshell, every download attempt will fetch a malware that will look different to the mobile anti-malware platform (while staying the same malware by functionality), hence making its hash database useless.

As of today, any mobile anti-malware platform that solely relies on a hash-based malware detection technique can already be considered obsolete. Today, conventional signature-based scanners will still do the job, but only just. Tomorrow, they will have to be able not only scan malicious code, but also emulate it (native ARM CPU instruction set plus Android OS API level) as it will only be a matter of time until the run-time compression and code obfuscation techniques emerge on the mobile malware front.

But let’s get back to our mutton.

Today’s discovery presents a new trojan that appears to be mass-generated on the server side (strictly speaking, not a server-based polymorphism, but one step away from it, considering how easy it is to shuffle the code, then recompile/reassemble it into the new APK files right from the server-based code).

The trojan disguises itself under a popular legitimate application – Opera browser.

As with most of the malware nowadays, it is driven with the "show me the money" motivation, and thus, it still plays the same dumb, but surprisingly resilient trick by sending SMS messages to the premium phone numbers. Nothing fancy apart from the obfuscated Java code:

Social engineering is cruel (as always): on its fake web site, the trojan warns the users about the cases of the fraudulent usage of its platform, just like legitimate companies are trying to fence themselves off with the security advisories whenever the fraudsters are trying to piggy-back on their brand name/reputation.

Fraudsters' site: "Beware of the fraudulent usage of the Opera browser on mobile phones!"